


normal problems for normal people

by threefourthstime



Category: Twitch Plays Pokemon (Let's Play)
Genre: Gen, cosmic humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23959435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threefourthstime/pseuds/threefourthstime
Summary: Oh, great, some kid's using unknowable powers the mortal mind cannot comprehend to fuck up the skybox again.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	normal problems for normal people

**Author's Note:**

> can't touch gen 1-2 kanto without breaking half of reality, i swear
> 
> this is kind of a spiritual sequel to [an old fic of mine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8122099/chapters/18618475), although it's not necessary reading or anything! all you need to know is that tpp's been going for 7 years now, and somehow the guy who was raised by sewer rats and randomly teleports between alternate timelines is the most normal anniversary host we've ever had. i love these kids
> 
> also, although i went a different direction with it, this was originally inspired by a comment by [this person](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzirocker/pseuds/mitzirocker) so here's a link to their stuff they're cool

Red isn’t holding a grudge or anything. Really! After all, things are going pretty okay now; Dipper’s been giving him the grand tour of Johto, at “study-stuff-and-be-a-nerd” speed rather than “get-possessed-and-panic-about-the-apocalypse” speed, and their teams get along great. Blue, apparently, is a Gym Leader now, and it suits him a lot. And, honestly, a lot of things in his life are _more_ normal than they were before.

So it’s not a grudge, because he’s not _mad_. He’s not mad about the year of half-memories, and he’s not mad about the dreams, and he’s not mad about the stingline scars wrapped around his forearms like the Red Chains. Nobody died, and nobody made him resurrect any ancient chaos gods or whatever, and everything’s fine. It’s fine.

It just...wasn’t a fair fight at all, is the thing. That’s it. Red had obtained all those powers, and he didn’t even get to _use_ them, because Other-Red had just showed up out of nowhere. Other-Red was older, and he had all the _practice_ , and apparently all the Uzumaki bullshit is just, like, a feature? Like a totally normal thing??? When he poked his head into this timeline, Red asked a couple of the other…“Hosts”--including the kid that _also_ looks like Red’s evil twin or whatever--and the kids had just shared a look, like that wasn’t even the half of it. Like it was something they were used to. Like there was even _worse_ stuff that they’d seen happen.

It’s creepy, okay? There, he said it. He’s pretty sure Other-Red isn’t going to, like, possess him and try to steal his existence anymore, but his whole deal is still so, _so_ creepy. It would be creepy even if he was some random guy, and at least the two of them are a few years apart, because Red can hang onto that to smother the reminder that _that’s you, that was you, that should have been you._

So maybe that _look_ Other-Red gave him wasn’t intending to start a fight. And maybe, at least, Red should have mentioned it to somebody first. But in his defense, if you catch somebody’s eyes like that, on a Route or in Victory Road, it means you’d better be ready for a battle.

Just...maybe there are less Pokémon in this battle than usual. Think of it like a rematch.

* * *

Evan glances at Abe, whose eyes are tracing the gashes spreading and restitching across the bright blue sky. For every spiral unspooling into a jumbled wave-dashed _watching_ there’s a strike of static lightning, edges blurring and reforming and rewriting again; it’s impossible to make out the silhouettes at the heart of the vortices, though that might be because the two of them have given up on physical forms by now. The local weather stations, he’s pretty sure, must be having a field day.

“Yeah?” he asks.

Abe sighs deeply, pushing his glasses back up by the bridge. “I mean,” he says, “I could chase after them. I probably should chase after them.” He grimaces. “But I’m always out of it for like, a week, and what if it’s worse next time? What if they do it in a city, and I have to do that _and_ cover them, except I can’t because I did it right now?”

Evan considers this. “Want me to try?”

“ ** _No._ **”

“Okay, okay, jeez.” Evan puts his hands up in surrender, but goes back to crossing his arms, watching the false fireworks scour their way through the sky. After a minute or so, he fidgets a bit and adds: “You know, if you really don’t want to--”

“It’s fine,” Abe interrupts. “It’s fine, I’m fine with it, it’s fine.”

Evan gives him a look.

“--Look it was ages ago and it wasn’t even that bad, I don’t even get like, possessed like half the Hosts on earth it seems like, really I _should_ be the one to do it if it’s anybody. I’m not going to _not_ help out just because I--just because--” Abe groans. “It shouldn’t freak me out anymore!”

“...Which part?”

“You know, the whole--” Abe starts pacing. “The--I mean, this part is fine,” he says, gesturing to the flashing lights. “I don’t care, Red has practice and I know he’s still him, and it seems like the new guy’s got control of it too. But the whole--sorcerer's _fucking bullshit_ I don’t want it to be like it was back then, I still don’t remember parts and I don’t want to just lose it while I’m in there, and it was literally _years_ ago, why don’t I know how to deal with it by now? I can handle the rest of this fine so what’s the problem?!”

Static covers up his eyes like a screen; there’s a faint sense of freezing wind and a vast emptiness, a pocket of light at the end of the world. 

The other mountain, he guesses.

Evan’s never heard the whole story--of all people, he shouldn’t be the one to ask--but he’s heard parts of it. From Baba, mostly, or from Abe’s flashes of memory. An abstracted silhouette standing in the snow. Flashes of a human form, _sometimes_ , as the memory leached out of the world, as everything--

(...)

(That place--are those someone else’s memories? A different version of him, a different story?)

(If that’s the end of the story--what will he do, if one day he has to remember?)

He’s quiet for a second before asking: “You said you just remembered it, right?”

Abe looks sideways at him. “...Yeah?”

“Then...isn’t it kinda like it just happened? For you?”

Abe stares at him blankly. Then he snorts, running a hand down his face. “I...mean. I mean--” He blinks. “...Huh.”

“Yeah?”

Abe starts laughing, in earnest this time, bending over a little from it. He wipes at his eyes and says, “Alright, I...guess that’s true. This is so _stupid,_ hah--”

Sometimes--well, Evan’s not sure this is great advice, but he’s working off experience--sometimes there’s really not much you can do besides get caught up in under-your-breath laughter like a supervillain. Abe does that, and Evan tries to give him the space to do it, pulling out his Pokégear and taking a few pictures of the sky. Most of them turn out blurry and at least a couple start eating his memory card, but it’s a good effort.

“Wait,” Evan says, a couple minutes later. “How am I the well-adjusted one here, all of a sudden.”

“I was gonna s--” Abe stops. “I mean...no offense--”

“Yeah?”

“It’s just, well--”

“Mmhm? Go on?”

“There’s really no good way to respond to this, is there--”

“Oh my god you guys are taking _foreverrrr_ ,” Xena complains, popping up between them. Abe jumps so hard he almost knocks his glasses off. “Is one of you guys gonna go or can I do it?”

“Uh--sorry?” Evan shifts uncomfortably.

Xena puts a hand on her hip, looking them up and down. “Don’t say _sorry_ ,” she says, “I figured out a new thing and I’ve been waiting on it for _ages_. You wanna know how long I’ve been waiting?”

“Three days!” Cici shouts from across the field.

Xena nods. “So???”

“Uh.” Abe’s hand goes to the back of his neck. “I mean, if that’s fine…?”

Evan hesitates, then shrugs one shoulder.

“ _Sweet_ ,” says Xena, pumping a fist. “Watch this, okay!”

With that, she starts glowing, silhouette rapidly flickering. Evan thinks he sees a pair of wings in there before a wave of vertigo hits and, instincts finally kicking in, he covers his eyes. He tries not to think about it too much, over the sounds of something echoing and echoing and--why is there music playing. What are--why are those instruments--oh god, is this a magical girl transformation or something? What the fuck? What the fuck.

When he opens his eyes, there are a lot more random letters in the sky than there used to be, and he has a headache that he’s pretty sure isn’t supernatural at all.

A few minutes of the lightshow pass before Abe says, quietly: “...did you see they named it Ass?”

“God, they did, didn’t they,” says Evan. A mile away, a dozen trainers find themselves with 128 extra Super Potions. “They really, really did.”

* * *

“Hey,” says Kay, as he lifts up another rock. “Found a weird bug.”

X-Man turns his way, looking over Kay’s shoulder on his tiptoes. The flashing sky makes it a little hard to make out the shadows, but it sure is a bug, like if you drained the colors off a Caterpie. Cici’s pretty sure it was doing fine in its little cave, but Kay doesn’t put the rock down, staying balanced sitting on his heels.

“Y’know what it is?” he asks.

X-Man makes a gesture and Iaqo flaps away from his shoulder, hopping over to get a closer look. It tilts its head, and X-Man mirrors the gesture as the bug blinks at them.

After a long period of contemplation, Iaqo opens its beak and says confidently, “I AM VERY DISGUSTED WITH THE TRASHY MAN. IN SPITE OF THE MONSTER, AND THE COACH, ONLY TRASHY, I W--”

Cici tries not to sigh, slipping his hands into his pockets as he looks up at the glitchy hellshow. Well, two-thirds glitchy hellshow, one-third weird spiral hellshow? Either way he must fail at it, because Kay looks over at him and asks, “What?”

“Hmm?” Cici responds. “Uh--nothing?”

“What,” Kay repeats, completely unsubtle.

“ _Nothing_ ,” Cici returns. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you--” Wait, that’s mean, given the whole grew-up-in-the-sewers thing. He swallows the sentence and says: “I’m just...thinking.”

“...Alright.” Kay blinks slowly, then goes back to looking at the weird Pokémon, which X-Man is poking at, and probably getting dirt all in his finger joints. He should at least wear gloves or something.

“Name origin,” Iaqo recites. “Scatterbug is a combination of scatter and bug, and perhaps litterbug. Kofukimushi may be a combination of コフキコガネ kofukikogane (Japanese co--”

“Doesn’t it ever bother you?!” Cici blurts, before he can think better of it.

They both turn to look at him, and even the bird stops mid-pasta. Cici feels his face heating up; they’re having whatever they think of as fun, and he can’t even not mess _that_ up-- “Doesn’t it bother you at all?” he finds himself asking. “They’re--” He gestures to the flashing lights. “They have all those...abilities, or whatever, and we’re supposed to just sit here and be--?”

“Normal?” Kay asks.

“Normal,” Iaqo repeats flatly. X-Man elbows it.

“That’s...not…? No? No.”

“Normal,” Iaqo says again, flickering its laser eyes on and off pointedly. Kay leans over to elbow it too, misses, and overbalances onto the ground. X-Man covers his mouth.

“I’m...okay, I’m serious. It really doesn’t…? ... _Ugh._ ”

X-Man tilts his head. Kay keeps lying on the ground, but, slightly muffled by grass, asks, “What?”

“Not...I don’t know,” says Cici. He used to be better at talking than this. He used to be better at _everything_ than this. Or maybe he’s just lying to himself, again, again-- “If something bad happens,” he says, “what, how are we supposed to fix it? Are we just supposed to leave it up to them?” _Again, again--_

Kay seems to consider this, brushing dead grass off his face. “...You jealous?”

“What? No.”

“You mean it?”

“I--” Cici starts, before the response curdles in his throat. He doesn’t think he is, but…

But he would have said that before, wouldn’t he have? _I’m not jealous._ He would have meant it, too; he would have been so sure he wasn’t at all, up until he’d walked into the Champion’s room that day. And, sure, he’d told himself it wasn’t real, that it didn’t matter, that it was all just _them_ playing pretend. But it had felt so good to scream at the broken-up Voices’ game, the mirage, in a world where nothing meant anything anymore, in a world where no one cared about consequences, in a world where Xena’s eyes could still widen as if he--

( _You’re even more of a freak than_ she _is, and I’m_ sick _of--stop, stop, that’s not--don’t_ look _at me like that I don’t mean that that’s not_ me-- _this is your fault just stop it just SHUT UP JUST SHUT UP JUST SHUT UP JUST_ **_SHUT UP--_** )

The Voices’ little breakdown and his, all intertwined. A feedback loop coiled inwards until no one could think past the static. A hundred lies all eating themselves alive.

And there had been consequences, after all. Because of course there were.

...Oh, yeah, Kay’s still staring at him, huh. Cici shoves the memories to one side and straightens his posture and hopes he still remembers the conversation. “I’m not jealous,” he croaks. “Not of her.”

Kay blinks at him slowly. “...Of somebody?” he asks.

“ _Urgh_ \--” Cici pinches the bridge of his nose. “I don’t--know--”

_Because of course there were--_

“...They’ll do it again,” he says, more quietly than he expects. “You saw the new kids, right?--they had to make them cheat before something worse happened?--there’ll be another kid like me, probably a dozen of them. They’re the _Voices._ There’ll be a kid like me, except that kid won’t be stupid enough to hit reset, and people will get hurt for good, and the kid’ll just be the fuckup forever. It’ll be all, ‘oh, don’t be like that kid,’ ‘remember what happened last time?’, except they’ll do it again, and again, and again over and over and _over_ , because they don’t change! Nobody does! Even rewinding the whole world didn’t stick! Nothing changes and I’m _tired_ of it because no matter how hard you burn everything down it _never fucking stops!”_

Kay doesn’t say anything. Cici turns to glare pointlessly, but pauses when he sees X-Man, who’s turned away a little to pretend he’s not listening. The bird’s sitting in his lap, and both of them are staring upwards, at all the forces ripping the sky wide open.

...It’s easy to tell which parts are Xena, somehow. The whole point of god war stuff is that it’s incomprehensible, and the whole point of glitch stuff is that the laws all start melting down. But of the mirages spreading like clouds, the nonsense tiles and misplaced textures...it’s simple to find her there, in a way he can’t explain.

Which means he can also tell which parts are Red’s.

The younger Red, he means. The one from the world Cici had created. The one who talked to them in a raspy voice, and who has the wrong color eyes, and who seems to be punching normal Red in the face pretty well, and who introduced himself with almost his whole story, as if making sure they knew he’s not the same.

“Seems like changing to me,” says Kay.

Cici looks at him. He opens his mouth, then closes it. Slowly, quietly, he lets himself go back to watching the sky.

* * *

Outside, there’s a sound like a hundred Graveler using Selfdestruct. 

The younger Blue jumps, banging his elbow on the table. “The heck was that?” he yelps.

“Eh,” says Blue--the normal Blue--through a mouthful of noodles. “‘S prob’ly fine.”

Azure discreetly sends off a group text, then puts her phone facedown in her lap. “Yeah,” she says, “probably normal. Don’t worry about it.”


End file.
